Archive Your Files Month

February is National Archive Your Files Month. Yes, another one of those organizing “holidays.” No, I don’t know who comes up with them. It is a good time to archive your files, however, as you should have received paperwork that supports your taxes from your banks, employers and other entities.

I recommend that clients hold on to tax-related paperwork for seven years and destroy it after that. There is no need to keep the paperwork in your frequent-access filing, though; put it in a remote location. Creating an archive area for older files that you rarely (or never) look at gets them out of the way of your day-to-day paperwork activities.

You can keep archives in a box in a closet or a separate drawer of a file cabinet instead of devoting “prime real estate” to files you don’t use regularly. My archives are in a closet in the basement, where the oldest tax file is shredded to make room for the most current one.

Where can you keep archives so that they don’t compete for space with your active files?

Organized by Marcie TM: Save time and money by letting go of what you don't need and finding room for what you value
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